For his latest anime, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep
Below (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, 2011),
animator Makoto Shinkai delves into
legends about the underworld. In
Japanese creation mythology, it is said that the female deity Izanami dies and
goes to Yomi – the “shadowy land of the dead.”
The male deity Izanagi goes after her and tries to bring her back to the
land of the living. The tale has many
similarities to the ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and his wife Eurydice, and
Shinkai draws on the symbolism of both of these tales in this, his most complex
animated film to date.

The central character is a
lonely preteen girl called Asuna Watase.
Her father died when she was very young and her mother often works night
shifts at the hospital which means that Asuna is frequently left to fend for
herself. In addition to her schoolwork
she cleans her own clothes, makes her own meals, and does other chores around
the house to help out as much as she can.
Although she is doing well in school and seems to get along well with
her classmates, Asuna spends a lot of time on her own. She often sits on the hillside listening to
strange music that she can pick up on the crystal radio left to her by her
father.

One day while crossing the
rail bridge, she is attacked by a giant, bear-like creature. A mysterious boy named Shun rescues her and
the next day they bond with each other listening to the crystal radio. Shun tells her that he comes from another
land called Agartha and there appears to be a connection between his native
land and the music Asuna listens to on her radio. They promise to meet up again the next day,
but Shun has disappeared and is rumoured to have fallen to his death into the
river.

Meanwhile, Asuna’s teacher
goes on pregnancy leave and is replaced by a charismatic male teacher called
Morisaki. Asuna is fascinated by Mr.
Morisaki’s tales of the underworld and visits him at his house to learn
more. It turns out that both Asuna and
Morisaki are destined to journey into the underworld (Agartha) together – Asuna is drawn
there by her natural curiosity and her desire to be loved, whereas Morisaki has
been driven mad by his grief for his late wife and he uses violence to go on
his Orphean quest to resurrect his wife.

Makoto Shinkai has
admitted in interviews that he has been deeply
influenced by the films of Hayao
Miyazaki and the influence is very strong in Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below. Asuna has a little cat-like creature – which
the medicine man in the underworld calls a yadoriko
– which is very similar to the fox-like creature Teto in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). The Quetzalcoatls resemble some of the kami from Princess Mononoke (1997) as
well as the stone robots of Laputa:
Castle in the Sky (1987). The use of a flying ship – the Shakuna Vimana ark
– is also very Miyazaki.

While the Miyazaki
influence is undeniable, I am not one of those critics declaring Shinkai as the
next Miyazaki. First of all, I think
that’s putting way too much pressure too soon on a director who has not yet
fully matured as an artist. Second of
all, Shinkai’s films have a very different feeling to me than Studio Ghibli
films. Shinkai’s work takes itself much
more seriously than a Studio Ghibli film. A typical Ghibli film is full of visual gags and self referential humour, whereas there are
few laughs in Shinkai. What sets Shinkai
apart from his peers is that he is the master of dreamy landscapes. He uses such a colourful palette – and not
just for landscapes. Some of the interior
sequences of the medicine man's home looked as colourful and intricate as a
patchwork quilt. One of the more
interesting sequences was the flashback to all the famous world leaders from Caesar to Napolean, from Hitler to Stalin who, according to the legends of the bottom-dwellers – tried to
plunder the riches of the underworld. The sequence was painted like an elaborate wall
mural.

Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is on the one hand the
moving story of a lonely girl’s quest to make sense of the world she is living
in. On the other hand, for the viewer it is a philosophical journey into the realms of the possible. Although there is some influence of the
Orpheus myth, the ideas in this film largely come from Shintō, Buddhist, and even some Sanskrit thought, with the medicine man reminding us that while it is normal to grieve the
dead, we should not pity them for the cycle of life and death is a natural
one. Death is not to be feared but accepted. We need to count our blessings and
learn to let go of the past in order to continue on our journey into the
future.

16 June 2012

One of the most beautiful
and engaging sights at Nippon Connection 2012 was the artist KozueKodama (こだまこずえ) doing live painting. Dressed in a kimono covered
with paint splatters, Kodama spent hours at her canvas every day for the
duration of the festival. At first, the
canvas was just black and white, but as she progressed she added more and more
layers to the canvas and it soon was awash with bright yellow, pink, and blue
hues. The central image of the painting
is a majestic red-crowned crane (タンチョウ/tanchō). After the festival, the painting was
auctioned off and the money raised went to earthquake and tsunami relief
efforts in the Tohoku region.

Kodama grew
up in Hiroshima and studied oil painting at Hiroshima University. She is best known for doing paintings on
large canvases, but she has also dabbled in acting, animation, and at the
Nippon Connection karaoke bar she demonstrated that she has an amazing set of
pipes as well.

Some of
Kodama’s accomplishments include showing at the Biennale in Venice in 2005,
creating concert fliers for the jazz musician Naruyoshi Kikuchi, and a huge 16
meter painting on the wall of a bridge which won her the Design Art Sign Award
as part of the project Revitalizing the City of Hiroshima (2008). Her animated short Suipas Zuirapusa (スイパスズイラプサ, 2009) which she made in
collaboration with Yoko Tanabe, was
nominated for the NHK Digista Best Selection.
It also featured in the indie film Plum Essence (2009)
which Kodama also starred in.

Since early
2011, Kodama has been based in Düsseldorf – the largest centre for Japanese
culture in Germany. Her husband, Seiichi Sato is a professional hair
stylist at the chic salon Leo’s
Düsseldorf. Kodama’s next event is
another Charity Live Painting. It will
be held at the Tres
Chicas Bistro and Café in Düsseldorf next Friday night Friday, June 29th (note the date change!), from 18:00 – 23:00
with all money going to earthquake and tsunami relief. Learn more about Kodama on her official website and YouTubechannel.

14 June 2012

While writing my review of Koji Yamamura’s Muybridge’s
Strings this week, I got to thinking about how many innovative animators
have been inspired by the music of J.S.
Bach. In the case of Muybridge’s Strings, Bach’s Crab Canon – which is often described as
a musical palindrome – complements Yamamura’s exploration of the possibilities of
non-linear time.

-this
film was commissioned by the Aichi Culture Centre to commemorate the 250th
anniversary of Bach’s passing

music: ???

Fantasia

(Walt Disney, 1940)

music: the film opens with Bach’s
Tocatta and Fugue in D minor conducted by Leopold Stokowski. This
section of the film was directed by Samuel Armstrong with visual development
credited to Oskar Fischinger

The End of Evangelion

(新世紀エヴァンゲリオン劇場版
Air/まごころを、君に)

(Kazuya Tsurumaki/Hideaki Anno,
1997)

music: the soundtrack to this film
was composed by Shiro Sagasu but liberally features selections of J.S. Bach’s
music throughout including “Air on the G String” (August Wilhelmj’s adapation
of J.S. Bach’s “Air” from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWC 1068),
“Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major”, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, and “Komm,
süsser Tod”.

Tale of Tales

(Yuri Norstein, 1979)

music: the score was composed by
Mikhail Meyerovich and includes excerpts from several pieces by Bach (most notably
the E flat minor Prelude BWV 853 from The Well-Tempered Clavier). In addition, the film references Mozart (the
Andante second movement from Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, K41), the tango “Weary
Sun” by Jerzy Petersburski, and most prominently a traditional Russian lullaby.

In his first collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada
(NFB), the animator Kōji Yamamura
takes us on a journey into cinematic history.
Muybridge’s Strings (2011) is
a poetic investigation of the nature of time – a concept which has occupied philosophers
since ancient times.

Our relationship to time underwent a radical transformation in the
19th century with the development of photography and related
technologies. The English photographer
Eadweard Muybridge was among the first to recognize the scientific potential
for photography in the study of human and animal locomotion. The most significant of these was Muybridge’s
1878 series “Sallie Gardner at a Gallop” which settled the debate over whether or
not all four of a horse’s four hooves leave the ground while galloping. Most artists of the day usually painted a
horse with at least one hoof on the ground, for the action was too fast for the
human eye to determine all parts of horse locomotion.

To set up this experiment, Muybridge placed 24 trip wires (strings) at
equidistant intervals (27 inches/68.58cm) that would trigger cameras to take a
photograph. It is these strings that
inspired Yamamura to make Muybridge’s Strings. The motif of strings interlaces itself
throughout the film in a manner reminiscent of “the red string of fate” of East
Asian folklore that is said to bind us together “regardless of time, place, or
circumstance / the thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.” (see
my discussion of Kazuhiko Okushita’s
animated short The Red
Thread to learn more.)

Two distinct storylines are woven together in Muybridge’s Strings. The
first is the remarkable life of Muybridge himself which Yamamura explores
first through the man’s life's work – the film is replete with images from
Muybridge’s famous photographic series (the elephant, American bison, naked man
running, mother and child, and so on) – and also through an investigation of the man himself through vignettes
from his troubled marriage which ended in his murdering of his wife’s lover and
being cleared on the grounds of “justifiable homicide”, through to his celebrated
zoopraxiscope lectures at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

The second storyline is that of a mother and child in present day
Tokyo, which was inspired by Yamamura’s observation of his own daughter growing
up. The speed with which children grow
up draws attention to the passage of time – a constant reminder of how fleeting
our time here on earth really is. Visually, Yamamura distinguishes the two time
periods by adding warmer hues to the Tokyo storyline, in contrast to the shades
of grey of the past. The two parallel stories
are linked through the use of similar motifs: Muybridge’s stopwatch, mother and
child, the clasping of hands, horses, and; of course, strings.

Strings bind the Tokyo mother and daughter together in a beautiful
abstract sequence, but strings also appear as a motif in the piano that they
play together. The soundtrack of the
film was arranged by the legendary NFB music director Normand Roger. In keeping with the theme of non-linear time, they decided
upon the use of J.S. Bach’s Crab Canon (1747) as a key musical motif
in the film. This is significant for the Crab Canon is a musical palindrome – an arrangement of two musical
lines that are both complementary and backward.
Here
you can see a video of the tune being visualized as a Möbius strip.

The soundtrack also foregrounds the sounds of technology: from click clack of photos being taken to the and the whir and
clatter of the zoopraxiscope, which is considered the first device for the projection
of moving images. Although the
technologies have changed in the ensuing 125+ years, our desire to photograph
and capture fleeting moments of time has only increased. With Muybridge’s
Strings Yamamura manages not only to pay tribute one of the moving images
pioneers, but to also open our minds to a consideration of our own relationship
to the passage of time.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Muybridge’s Strings is available for purchase from the NFB on DVD
and Bluray
as part of the Animation Express 2
collection. It will also be released on
Bluray in Japan in August.

An exhibition of Koji Yamamura's works is currently on at Skip City until July 22.

07 June 2012

onedotzero is a London-based moving image
and digital arts organisation which commissions, showcases and promotes
innovation across all aspects of moving image, digital and interactive arts. Founded in 1996, onedotzero has gained a
reputation for representing a diverse array of artistic endeavour via the
annual onedotzero: adventures in motion
festival and its associated touring. Suppported by the BFI and the Arts Council
England, it has a cross media and collaborative approach attuned to
technological advances and fast paced change within digital arts and the
contemporary culture landscape.

The
Japanese portion of the festival selection j-star 11 screened at Nippon Connection 2012. It’s an eclectic mixture of music videos, innovative
commercials, and short films. Thank You World from the Sapporo Short
Fest 2011 and Blind by Yukihiro Shoda were made as a direct response
to the 3/11 disaster. I had not heard of
Construction by Mirai Mizue, but it turned out to be a low res excerpt of Tatamp
(2011) featuring twoth. Some of the highlights for me were Toshiaki Hanzaki’s animated music video
for Mr. Children – a popular band who
have a long history of supporting alternative animation – tangefilms’ phenakistoscope inspired animated music
video for Hitomi Azuma, the
surreal geometric play of Shinya Sato’s
video for Chateau Marmont, and Yasuda Takahiro’s two tone approach to
the primal scream of Kaisoku Tokyo’s
Copy. For those of you who missed this event, a number
of the films are featured on Vimeo.

If
you don’t believe in the Rabbit, it means that you wouldn’t believe anything.

ËËËËË

Once
we called the noble, profound and mysterious existence The Great.

We have moved
with the time, our thought and consciousness has changed.

And yet what makes us
still keep calling it The Great?

ËËËËË

The Great Rabbit
(2012) marks a new development in the career of animator Atsushi Wada, for it is the first time that he has made an
international co-production. It is a
co-production between CaRTe bLaNChe
(who also represents artists like Keiichi
Tanaami, Keita Kurosaka, and
other CALF animators among many
others) and the French production company Sacre Bleu
who specialize in short films.

At
Nippon
Connection 2012, Wada explained that it was also the
first time that he had ever used a sound designer – in this case Masumi Takino who has also done the
sound for Ryo Okawara’s latest film A
Wind Egg (Kara no tamago, 2012) which is screening this
week at Annecy.
Wada told us he was a bit shy initially for it turns out that for many
of the sound effects in his films, he strips off and uses his own body (ie. for
the sounds of slapping, etc.).

ËËËËË

The
film opens with a cubby boy in a tight close up, panting with exertion, who carries
a giant, ball-shaped egg. When a hand stops him to
push the egg, he covers it with his shirt.
He pauses to interact with a weasel who
has rubbed up against his leg like a cat.
Suddenly a bird swoops down and removes the boy’s shirt and the egg
falls silently to the ground. He looks
around as if to see where the egg has fallen, sighs deeply and bends to remove
his shorts, his flabby tummy bouncing gently as he does. He then carefully wraps his shoes up in his
shorts and tosses them away from himself.

A
rabbit sits on an alter munching on something.
Indecipherable whispers, almost guttural in nature can be heard.

A
human-rabbit hybrid stands on a chair with a small, shirtless boy holding the
chair steady as a queue of chubby boys – reminiscent of the queue of salarymen
having their noses examined in Wada’s Day of
Nose (2005) – with giant ball-like eggs approach to have the egg
inspected by the humanoid rabbit. Once
the rabbit-man has touched the egg, the chubby boys tuck it under the shirts
– the same routine that opened the film but this time in a long shot.

The
rabbit-man touches his rabbit ears and we hear a humming. Cut to CCTV footage of a typical urban
alleyway with a time code in the top left corner. A figure can be briefly glimpsed carrying a giant egg. A new angle of the playground
shows that it is the weasel, with the giant egg tucked on his back held by his
tail. In the third shot, the weasel and
his egg are captured in a net on a grassy field. His captor is a boy sitting on a tree branch,
much like the one in In a Pig’s Eye. The
boy licks his lips as though anticipating a feast. He takes the struggling weasel out of the
net, then takes his place inside the net, mimicking the weasel’s movements.

A
panting boy walks by with crumbs or shards of some kind on his shorts. A mother bird with her brood tucked in a
shirt is abruptly taken from her perch by a giant boy with glasses and the
chicks are made to poke at the bottom of the boy in the net. The boy falls free of the net to land on the
ground next to two small animals staring silently and one of the giant
eggs. He picks up the egg and there is a
swish pan to the queue in front of the rabbit-man.

Incoherent
whispering, a chubby boy a cloth wrapped over his face gestures and moves
strangely, like a blind man trying to find his way through an unfamiliar room.

The
rabbit sits at the altar, chews benignly.
Or is everything as it seems? The
frame is rewound and played back slowly and we see hands pushing the weasel
inside of the rabbit’s mouth. A chubby
boy with a remote control looks at the TV image off camera and whispers to
himself, looking around him as if concerned that someone is watching his every
move as well.

ËËËËË

There
is an irony in calling a rabbit “great” for a rabbit is really such a benign
creature. As herbivores, they do not
really pose a threat to anyone except for the fact that they notoriously
reproduce at a rapid rate. At Nippon
Connection 2012, Atsushi Wada told us that he
randomly chose the rabbit as a central symbol for this film because he started
making The Great Rabbit during the
year of the Rabbit.

From
a Buddhist perspective; however, nothing is random and it is significant that
Wada chose a rabbit as the central animal in this film. To be sure, Wada has shown in previous films
to be drawn to animals that are quiet and move in subtle ways. Because he has often used sheep in previous
films, I was reminded in The Great Rabbit
of the idiom “the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” for although the rabbit appears to
sit and do nothing, except perhaps be worshipped, in the slow motion playback
we realize that appearances can be deceiving.

The
visual reference to Wada’s earlier film Day
of Nose with the men queuing for inspection emphasizes the theme of societal
pressures on people to follow the dictates of the ruling elites. This is heightened by the suggestion that Big
Brother is watching our every move through the use of CCTV footage to capture
the weasel stealing an egg. In the wake
of 3/11, The Great Rabbit reads like
a warning for us not to follow in the dictates of the government or to believe
everything we see on the news. We must
follow Atsushi Wada’s example of looking at the subtle clues of movement and
gesture, and question the validity of what the powers that be are telling us.

As
Atsushi Wada explains: “A situation of disobedience stands only when there is a
relationship between a person who forces somebody to obey and a personal who
obeys him/her. Nowadays, the status of
relationships between superiors and inferiors, good and evil, aristocrats and
commoners is less visible, and it’s becoming more difficult to judge what is
right or wrong. Sometimes we even don’t
know what we are forced to obey.” The Great Rabbit is Wada’s expression of
this ambiguity.

When The Great Rabbit won the
Silver Bear at the Berlinale earlier this year, the jury commented: “This
dreamlike film uses a unique, surreal language to tickle our unconscious while
showing us the confusion of the modern world in animated form. Using a delicate
hand drawn style, Atsushi Wada decodes reality with absurd sequences of
characters caught in time.” (source)

Tributes have been pouring in around
the world for Kaneto Shindō (新藤兼人, 2012-2012), who passed away last week at the
age of 100. In addition to directing 48
feature-length films, Shindo was the author of more than 200 screenplays. I had the pleasure of seeing his final
feature film, Postcard (2010), when
it opened the Nippon Connection film festival last month. Read my
review here.

Among the many screenplays Shindo wrote for top
directors of the past century, including Kon
Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Yasuzo Masumura, Fumio Kamei, Kōzaburō Yoshimura, and Tadashi Imai,
it is not so well known that he wrote a screenplay for a film directed by the
great puppet master Kihachiro Kawamoto. Released in 1981, Rennyo and his Mother (蓮如とその母/Rennyo to
Sono Haha) was the first feature length puppet animation directed by
Kawamoto. It is a work that was privately
commissioned by a Buddhist organization with the screenplay written by Shindo
and the soundtrack composed by Toru Takemitsu. It tells the story of the historical figure,
the abbot Rennyo, who is revered as the Restorer of Shin Buddhism. The puppet film features the voice talent of
top actors such at Kyoko Kishida and
Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. It is screened rarely in Japan, and I have yet to hear of any overseas screenings.

Sadly, these books have not yet been
translated to English, but we can get a glimpse into Shindo’s history in the cinema in his documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of
a Film Director (1975), which he made as a tribute to his mentor. The best place to get to know Shindo is, of
course, through his films. I have put
together a list of 10 films he directed and 2 films that he wrote the
screenplays for - films that are, in my humble opinion, “must see” screening for any
fan of world cinema.

Children of Hiroshima

(原爆の子, 1952)

Although it screened at the Cannes
Film Festival in 1953, Children of
Hiroshima did not get its official release in the U.S. until last year (see
A.O. Scott’s NYTimes
review). A deeply moving tribute to
the survivors of the atom bomb, it tells the story of a young woman who returns
to her hometown several years after the bombing to confront the trauma and
suffering of her family and friends. The
film was commissioned by the Japanese Teachers’ Union and based upon
testimonies compiled by Prof. Arata Osada.

The Naked Island

(裸の島, 1960)

One of the top Japanese movies of
the 1960s, this dialogue free film tells the story of a family of four
surviving against the odds on a small island in the Sekonaikai
Archipelago. A film of poetic beauty which
won the top prize at the Moscow International Film Festival (1961) as well as a
National Board of Review Award (USA, 1962).

Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film
Director

(ある映画監督の生涯溝口健二の記録, 1975)

A most delightful discovery on the
Criterion release of Ugestsu (1953). With
a mixture of film clips, images of the hospital where Mizuguchi was treated in
the last days of his life, and interviews of friends, colleagues, and admirers.

Onibaba

(鬼婆, 1964)

A classic horror film based upon a Shin
Buddhist parable which Shindo transformed into a cautionary tale about sexual jealousy
and unrequited lust. This was Shindo’s
first period film – with its breathtakingly composed landscapes it is much more
than just a cult film.

Kuroneko

(藪の中の黒猫, 1968)

One of the top horror films of the
1960s, Kuroneko is shot in glorious
black and white. An unsettling, highly
charged film, brimming with eroticism. It had a good chance at winning an award
at Cannes 1968 if the festival hadn’t been shut down for political reasons. Shindo’s favourite leading lady, Nobuko Otowa, and his cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda won top honours at the
Mainichi Film Concours.

Life of a Woman Sorrow is Only for Women

(女の一生, 1953) (悲しみは女だけに, 1958)

Two of many feminist themed films by Shindo that have suffered from lack of availability outside of Japan. Life of a Woman is adapted from the short story “Une vie” by Guy de Maupassant. Both Life of a
Woman and Sorrow is only for Women examine poverty and the suffering
of women in modern day Japan.

Lucky Dragon No. 5

(第五福竜丸, 1959)

Based on the true story of the Daigo
Fukuryū Maru – the ill-fating Japanese shipping boat that was contaminated by
nuclear fallout caused by U.S. testing on the Bikini Atoll in 1954. A devastating tale of the psychological and
social consequences of nuclear testing in the Pacific. A tragic, but politically significant film.

A Last Note

(午後の遺言状, 1995)

The final film of Shindo’s favourite
leading lady – his mistress turned second wife Nobuko Otowa. Peppered with references to the plays of Anton Chekov, A Last Note won Best Film at many Japanese Awards shows including
the Japanese Oscars, the Kinema Junpo Awards, and Mainichi. Otowa was posthumously awarded Best
Supporting Actress at the J Oscars and the Kinema Junpo Awards.

Tree Without Leaves

(落葉樹, 1986)

In this film, Shindo takes a poignant
autobiographical journey through the pre-war Hiroshima of his childhood. A reflection on aging and one’s changing
perspectives on one’s own life history.
One of Shindo’s most personal films.

2 Must-See Films with Screenplays by
Shindo:

Manji

(卍, Yasuzo Masumura, 1961)

Adaptated from the Junichiro Tanizaki novel Quicksand, Manji tells the story of two women whose close friendship develops
into romance. Read my full review
here.

Irezumi

(刺青, Yasuzo
Masumura, 1966)

Another Tanizaki adapation about a
strong woman – this one is a hard-as-nails fighter who uses her beauty and wits
to survive. Forced into geisha work, she
exacts a bloody revenge on the men who desire her.